Making Ksh your default login shell

Arch Linux init scripts use Bash. After the boot process is complete, the default login shell is user-specified. The chsh command can be used to change a user's default login shell without root access if the shell is listed in /etc/shells. (If Ksh was installed using pacman, it should already have an entry in /etc/shells).

Grab the full path for Ksh using /usr/bin/which:

$ which ksh

Which will probably output:

/bin/ksh

Change the default shell for the current user:

$ chsh -s /bin/ksh

Alternative as root, using usermod

Change the default shell using usermod:

# usermod -s /bin/ksh username

Note: The user needs to logout and log back in, to start using Ksh as their default shell.

After logging back in, verify that Ksh is the default shell with:

$ echo $SHELL

Uninstallation

You must first change your default shell back to Bash before removing the Ksh package.

Change the default shell for the current user to bash:

$ chsh -s /bin/bash

Alternative as root, using usermod

Change the default shell using usermod:

# usermod -s /bin/bash username

Now you can safely remove the Ksh package:

# pacman -R pdksh

Warning: Failure to follow the above will result in all kinds of problems.

If you did not follow the above, you can still change the default shell back to Bash by editing /etc/passwd as root.